REVIEW: Pile - Sunshine and Balance Beams

We walk down the left hand path

43:08 // August 15, 2025 // Sooper Records

Some bands you admire more than you love, and Pile has traditionally fit that bucket for me. The once Boston, now Nashville, group’s style is pretty far from my usual musical wheelhouse, but I can easily recognize their merit, and even songs and albums from them that I don’t fully “get” I am still able to appreciate in an academic sense.

Even if Pile might not be a household name, this sense of fascination certainly isn’t just limited to me - they’ve developed quite a cult following, and deservedly so, given no other act sounds that much like them. Much of their catalog twists together a gnarled assortment of noisy post-hardcore and gritty blues rock, simultaneously producing mind’s eye images of graffiti-pocked nocturnal urban streets and kudzu-encrusted shacks from the deepest Southern Gothic wilds - those two atmospheres shouldn’t be able to coexist, but such is this band’s power. Pile’s music is often glaringly ugly, portraying a desolate and grimy world, but nonetheless full of satisfying elements - the tasty interplay of instruments, Rick Maguire’s snarling fire-and-brimstone vocals, and cynical lyricism - and they’re capable of startling pop genius at times (that one motif in “Don’t Touch Anything”, among others - “don’t tell a souuuuul”). While in recent years, the band’s sound has lightened a bit to a more indie/art rock approach, epitomized by 2023’s All Fiction, it’s notable that this new era hasn’t made them any more accessible. Indeed, All Fiction may well be the most cryptic release I’ve heard this decade by any artist - a weird morass of creepy and sinister songs lacking in any sort of conventional structure. It’s also one of my favorite Pile records, so I’ll go to bat and claim there’s some internal logic and even strange genius present, but opinions may (and do) vary. Anyway, this band is fascinating.

The oddness of All Fiction (and the subsequent Hot Air Balloon EP, much in the same vein) made any expectation of Pile’s future direction uncertain. But here we are, with Sunshine and Balance Beams, which also marks the band’s transition to a new label (Sooper Records). As it turns out, we listeners have a curveball here - not only does this album manage to intertwine the tendencies of earlier and later Pile eras, but also delivers those goods in a (surprisingly) approachable manner, without losing any of the band’s traditional visceral energy.

What does all that mean in practice? The LP’s ten song tracklist weaves between unhinged moments of in-your-face, mercurial noisiness (the roaring climax of “Deep Clay”, with its spittle-flecked vocal freakout, or the angry grimness of “Born At Night”) and gentler indie tendencies (the off-kilter “An Opening”, featuring one of the cooler lyrics to open an album I’ve heard in a while (“we are the trees that lean towards the sun”) or the brief and delicate mid-album cut “Uneasy”). In those senses, Pile’s diverse previous material feels well-represented here. But this is also a release in which the band takes some risks and, oddly enough, those risks are likely to make the band more listenable to a wider audience. Examples abound - the brief intro track starts off with some surprisingly inviting chords (it does eventually turn ominous, but still), the aforementioned “Deep Clay” possesses some very catchy “ooh ooh ooh” backing vocals, the softer sections of “Bouncing in Blue” are much more melodic than comparable moments on All Fiction, and “Holds” not only contains a beautiful repeated chiming progression, but eventually drifts into a stirringly melancholic conclusion which seemingly has no real precursor in the Pile canon.

None of this is to say that Pile has “sold out”, to those who worry about that kind of thing. I’m dubious Taylor Swift is looking over her shoulder, first of all. But more importantly, Maguire and company’s unique vision is all over this offering, the results are as moodily artistic as ever, and this album is an absolute journey over the course of a not-especially-long runtime. If the ensuing sound is surprisingly beautiful in unsubtle ways at times, so much the better, at least for a Pile half-fan for me. Having doubts? Throw on “A Loosened Knot” at high volume and then get back to me - it grooves, it howls, it jams. The rest of the album covers a lot of ground, but you’re in great hands. Not only does Sunshine and Balance Beams find Pile at the top of their game, but it’s also a release that with any justice will find their cult following growing at least a little bigger. At the very least, I’ve finally found a Pile album that I don’t just admire, but also love.

8.5/10